This weekend, with the rest of the Techstars Sports crew, we had the opportunity to tour Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the Indianapolis Colts and the United Soccer League’s Indy Eleven. The stadium, located in the heart of Indianapolis, was built in 2008 and has yet to lose that new and shiny quality.
With one of the biggest retractable roofs in the NFL and a 200-foot Window on one side, on days with nice weather it can feel like an outdoor stadium. The $720 million dollar facility boasts 1,453 televisions and has a capacity of 70,000 people at one time. Lucas Oil Stadium also features two multi-level club lounges, 139 suites, retractable sideline seating, house reduction curtains, two HD video boards, 360 degree ribbon boards, spacious concourses and much more, all which allow the ease of welcoming any size event. Here’s what else we learned:
Fun Facts
- Lucas Oil Stadium is known to many as “The House that Manning Built,” off the success of one of the best Quarterbacks to ever play the position – Peyton Manning
- Lucas Oil Stadium is one of four retractable roof stadiums in the NFL (in total, the retractable roof weighs 5 million pounds!!)
- It takes approximately 9 minutes for the roof to open and close. The steel trusses that support the roof are over 750 feet long – as tall as some of the taller skyscrapers in Indianapolis
- For the seventh time in the last eight years, Lucas Oil Stadium was named the National Football League’s best host – not bad Indy!
- One of the most thrilling endings in NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship History took place at Lucas Oil Stadium, when the hometown favorites, the Butler Bulldogs (coached by current Boston Celtics Coach Brad Stevens) almost made a half-court shot at the buzzer to upset Duke in the Championship game
- Indy Eleven is the only team in the USL that has a female figure in their emblem – Lady Victory
- It costs over $40k to turn on the air conditioning for an event
- Lucas Oil Products secured the naming rights for the stadium at a cost of $122 million over 20 years
- The home team determines if the roof is to be opened or closed 90 minutes before kickoff according to the NFL rulebook
- The first public concert held at Lucas Oil was Kenny Chesney’s “The Poets & Pirates Tour” in 2008, and the highest attended tour was Taylor Swift’s Reputation Tour in 2018 (55,729 attendees)
- **Bonus Fact: Their Chicken Fingers & Fries are top notch!
